Sharks round-up: Win over Penguins a rare one when top guns didn’t score, that makeshift Tierney-Smith-Nieto line, choppy ice conditions, Fedun’s standby role and imaginative ways to improve the shootout

Like this one: When the Sharks beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 2-1 in a shootout Monday night, it was only the second time all season that San Jose had won a game without any of its top five scorers getting a goal.

That’s right – with the season at 67 games, the Sharks have managed only two of their 33 wins in games when Joe Pavelski, Logan Couture, Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau or Brent Burns did not score a goal. Matt Nieto had the lone regulation goal last night with Melker Karlsson and Tommy Wingels coming through in the shootout; on Dec. 12, it was Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Nieto scoring in a 2-1 win over the Philadelphia Flyers.

Coach Todd McLellan called it an “alarming stat” and it’d be hard to argue with that as it does reflect the lack of secondary scoring.

Beyond that, Burns and Marleau each have 48 points, tied for fourth and fifth best on the team. Wingels is in sixth place with 29 points – a considerable dropoff – and Tomas Hertl follows him at 25.

That can’t be the kind of gap the Sharks were hoping for when they talked at the beginning of the season of relying more heavily on younger players to pull their load and it’s no secret that Hertl and Matt Nieto have not lived up to their rookie numbers of last season.

On the other hand, it was Nieto who scored against the Penguins on a makeshift line with the Sharks youngest forward, Chris Tierney, and newly acquired Ben Smith. That was only Nieto’s seventh goal of the season, but three have come in the past three games, so maybe a corner has been turned. Maybe.

That line had never skated before being tapped to come out for the final 15 seconds of an unsuccessful power play and some of that had to do with the Penguins being the opponent.

“When the opposition has the one-two punch coming through like they did,” McLellan said, “you know that one of those two lines is coming back after the penalty kill. Even if they’ve used Crosby or Malkin on the penalty kill, they’re ready.”

That line may never skate together again, but McLellan liked the outcome – how Smth outbattled Kris Letang along the backboard, then steered the puck to Tierney who threaded it to Nieto just outside the crease. Suddenly that Sharks had a 1-0 lead after being outplayed most, if not all, of the first period.

For Nieto, the final month of the season has become both a time to salvage his own season as well as help push the Sharks into the playoffs.

“Yeah, it’s a good time to do both those things,” he said Tuesday. “To get that playoff position, I know that I have to step up and that everybody has to step up. There’s still 15 or 16 games left and hopefully it continues.”

Nieto said that his three recent goals have boosted his confidence and served as a reward for doing what it takes to score in the NHL these days.

“I think I’m playing in that scoring area a bit more, not being as shy to shoot the puck,” Nieto said. “I think that comes from scoring those goals and having that confience to drive the net or take it to those areas.”

Rookie Tierney – the youngest of the three forwards at 21 – started the season in San Jose then missed 35 NHL games during two stints at Worcester. That time in the minors, he said, helped him gain confidence in his NHL game.

”I’m feeling calm with the puck, being able to make the plays and take time to look up rather than just get it and throw it away sometimes,” Tierney said. “I definitely feel a lot more comfortable now.”

Smith draws upon his experience with the Chicago Blackhawks when he talks about the need for the Sharks to have four lines going down the stretch. Though he saw limited action during Chicago’s 2013 Stanley Cup title run – one regular season game, one in the finals against the Boston Bruins – he picked up on what was needed.

“It takes a four-line attack usually as you get closer to the post-season and then the post-season,” said Smith, who has a goal and two assists in his four games as a Shark. “ ‘Whatever it takes’ is really the message whether it’s blocking shots or winning faceoffs or contributing offensively. That’s something we need all season, but especially this time of year.”

****Ice conditions have long been an issue at the SAP Center. The team has made various investments to improve things over the years, but the quality of the playing surface – as it is in many rinks around the NHL – leaves a lot to be desired.

Apparently, though, talking about ice conditions is no longer the taboo it once was.

Several players at the outdoor game said conditions at Levi’s Stadium weren’t so bad and made favorable comparisons to the ice on their home rink. It was clear then and it’s becoming more clear now at the SAP Center is that choppy ice provides the Sharks incentive to keep their game simple rather than try and get too fancy.

McLellan made note of ice conditions Tuesday in talking about his team’s 2-1win over the Penguins.

“Go back and watch the first two power plays,” he said. “We got mad on the bench because we were frustrated with the players. . . . We had two power plays in the first period that we may as well have had shorts on and a basketball shirt the way the puck was bouncing around.”

****Taylor Fedun pretty much knows his purpose here in San Jose these days. The 26-year-old defenseman called up from Worcester realizes he’s a insurance policy until Matt Irwin is declared healthy enough to play after suffering an upper body injury last Friday in practice.

“Given the circumstances it kind of depends on the health of the guys up here,” Fedun said as far as getting his first start with San Jose. “I think that’s the way it’s going to be moving forward.”

Fedun, who played four games with the Edmonton OIlers before signing with the Sharks as a free agent last summer, described his season in the AHL as a bit of a roller-coaster.

“The way I saw it,” he said, “I had to earn a spot to get back up here and I didn’t necessarily do that at the beginning of the year. The last couple months have gone much better for me.”

Fedun, considered an offensive-minded puck mover, has five goals and 29 points this season in Worcester.

****McLellan has never been a big fan of shootouts, though he knows they’re popular with fans and not likely going to be eliminated.

So Tuesday, fresh off his team’s first shootout win since Oct. 28 in Colorado, he started thinking outside the box as far as ways to improve it. Way, way far outside the box.

For one things, why the need to go through the full roster before you can bring back your top shooters? Couldn’t a team fake injuries to its poorest performers during the overtime so that it’d back to its top guns before the opposition? What about just designating five guys as your shooters and keep cycling back to them as the shootout rounds add up.

For another, why not have the shootout when ice conditions are best, say before the second or third period begins? Then, if a game isn’t settled in 65 minutes, you have a pre-ordained winner based on a shootout earlier that same night.

Yes, we think he was kidding.

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987. For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001. He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time. You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks.